Virus writer arrested… for breaching coyright

Police in Kyoto have arrested three men, who are said to have been involved in a plot to infect users of the P2P file-sharing network Winny with a Trojan horse that displayed images of popular anime characters while wiping MP3 and movie files. 

According to Japanese media reports, the three men have admitted their involvement in the crime.  One of the men is said to have written the malware, while the other two are believed to have distributed the malicious code via Winny.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant for Sophos commented:

It isn’t illegal to write viruses in Japan, so the author of the Trojan horse has been arrested for breaching copyright because he used cartoon graphics without permission in his malware.  Because this is the first arrest in Japan of a virus writer, it’s likely to generate a lot of attention and there may be calls for cybercrime laws to be made tighter. Malware is truly a global menace, impacting on every user of the internet, and it is good to see police around the world doing their bit to tackle the problem.